Open positions

Louvain-La-Neuve

Geomatique Sentinel for agri-position

For the Sentinel-2 for Agriculture and Sentinels for the Common Agricultural Policy projects supported by the European Space Agency and related Ministries of Agriculture, the Research Laboratory in Environmetrics and Geomatics of the Earth and Life Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, seeks qualified and highly motivated candidate to join its research team for
Supporting and improving near real-time crop monitoring by satellite remote sensing (24 months)

Job description
The successful applicant will join a motivated team of young researchers in charge of research, production and analysis of various crop monitoring products using the new optical and radar Copernicus Sentinels data (http://esa-sen4cap.org/, http://www.esa-sen2agri.org/, https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/missions).

In close collaboration with the Sen4CAP European consortium and other international agencies like the ESA and the CIMMYT, the new researcher will contribute to various activities linked to the two below-cited projects, such as
- developing new image processing methods to produce crop maps and vegetation indicators at national scale using high resolution satellite time series;
- contributing to the new SAR bistatic remote sensing approach to assess the vegetation status and its change over the season from the BELSAR airborne campaign and UAV images in Hesbaye;
- demonstrating the use of the Sen2-Agri processing system across the user community via experts training and on-line webinars;
- facilitating the transfer of developed crop monitoring EO products and services to the national Agencies including capacity building and demonstrating cloud computing capabilities.

“Pilot Monitoring Project at national scale”: aims at adjusting in an operational context of a small country the system and findings provided by the “Sentinels for the Common Agricultural Policy” (Sen4CAP) project. The aim is to tune and further develop a prototype system to be turned into a national implementation to experiment the CAP monitoring concept at full scale within a ministerial environment in the context of modernization and simplification of the CAP in the post 2020 timeframe.
“Sentinel-2 for Agriculture" (Sen2-Agri) system: aims at providing the international user community with validated open source algorithms and a software to process Sentinel-2 data in an operational manner to derive Earth Observation products relevant for crop monitoring in the major worldwide agriculture systems.

Qualifications
The applicant will be:
- graduated in bioengineering or equivalent;
- trained in remote sensing and geomatics;
- fluent in french and english;
- motivated for applied research;
- able to actively contribute to an international collaborative work;
Additional experiences in cropping systems, field measurement, crop monitoring using remote sensing, advanced image processing, SAR physics and Python and/or R programming are most welcomed.

Application
For any complementary information, please contact Mme Pascale Thiran (+ 32 (0) 10 47 36 81) (Pascale.Thiran@uclouvain.be). The contract can start between January 2019 and February 2019.The interested candidates are invited to send a curriculum vitae and a motivation letter by email (Sophie.Bontemps@uclouvain.be and Pierre.Defourny@uclouvain.be ) as soon as possible.

Geomatics Proba-V Global land cover mapping

In support to the PROBA-V mission of the European Space Agency and the Belgian Federal Science Office, the Research Laboratory in Environmetrics and Geomatics of the Earth and Life Institute
de l’Université catholique de Louvain, seeks a qualified and highly motivated candidate to join its research team for
Mapping the land cover of the planet using PROBA-V satellite time series (15 months)

Job description
The successful applicant will join a motivated team of young researchers in charge of research, production (2014-2018) and analysis of a global land cover map at 100 m resolution for the European Space Agency and
close partnership with the Climate Change Initiative of the European Space Agency (http://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/CCI/viewer/, https://www.esa-landcover-cci.org/ , https://climate.copernicus.eu/ ).
In close interaction with the UCLouvain team member involved in the ESA CCI projects, the new researcher will contribute on one hand to benchmark methods towards a new production system for mapping land cover
at global scale, and on the other hand, to implement such a solution to produce a global land cover map with the support of the IT staff. These activities are also related to three complementary other projects supported
by the European Space Agency and the EU Copernicus program.

Tasks of the new researcher will include the:
‒ remote sensing research to improve land cover mapping methods in various parts of the world,
‒ full exploitation of the PROBA-V time series to produce a new global land cover map,
‒ reports and presentations on the work progress of the project.

Qualifications
The applicant will be:
- graduated as bioengineer or equivalent;
- trained in remote sensing and geomatics;
- fluent in written/ spoken French and English;
- motivated to carry out research activities in geomatics and remote sensing;
- ready to actively contribute to collaborative research and international teams.

Additional experiences in land cover/land use mapping, advanced image processing and Python or R
programming are most welcomed.

Application
For any complementary information, please contact Mme Pascale Thiran (+ 32 (0) 10 47 36 81) (Pascale.Thiran@uclouvain.be). The contract can start as early as possible and in January 2019 at the
latest. The interested candidates are invited to send a curriculum vitae and a motivation letter by email (pascale.thiran@uclouvain.be and cc: pierre.defourny@uclouvain.be ) as soon as possible to
Pr. P. Defourny
UCLouvain \ ELIe_Geomatics
Croix du Sud, 2 bte L5.07.16
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)